HIV/ AIDS awareness

Wednesday 23 July
Give presentation/ workshop about HIV/AIDS at school in Kuala Lumpur for 120  secondary school kids.

Presentation:

Lasts two hours. 

Introduction, every intern tells a little bit about their country.  
Show the students a short animated movie about how HIV enters the human body. About commander cells (cd4t) and soldiers and invaders from the outside.

Give presentation  about HIV and how you can get infected and how HIV is transmitted. Do the triangle test. Tell about the high risk fluids (blood, breastmilk, sexual fluids), no risk fluids (all other fluids likes saliva, stool and urine, sweat, tears, cough, sneeze, nose fluids) and transmission ( only human to human, not human to animal or animal to human. Only via DIRECT transmission. Direct contact of blood, unprotected sex, breastmilk or during pregnancy). Triangle test has three steps to see if you might be HIV infected. 1. Did a high risk fluid enter my body? 2. Did it enter my body via direct transmission? 3. If 1 and 2 are answered with yes, go to a doctor because you might be infected. 

Do a yes-no game: if the answer to the questions is yes,stand on the left. If the answer is no, stand on the right. are students standing on the wrong side? Why did they choose that answer? Example: is there a medicine for HIV? Answer: there is a medicine to slow down the degradation of the immune system BUT this is not a cure for HIV).

Show the students a short movie about a woman explaining how she got infected and how it affected her life. The faces of HIV: Kamaria's story.

Do an experience game: tell the students to write down (on a piece of paper that we give them) where they see themselves in ten years. Job? Partner? Children? Where will you live? Will you be safe and healthy? After this, let some students share what they wrote down. Than, some students have a little star in the corner of their sheet (which we put their beforehand). The students with little stars must now imagine they are infected with HIV. How does this change their life? Will they still have/get the same job? Will they live somewhere else (close to family instead of in another country)? Will they find /have a partner? Will they still get children? Again, let students share their thoughts and experiences. Let them experience the difference of having the infection and the stigma. 

Next, ask the students if they have questions or want to know more about HIV/AIDS. 
Ask them to write a short message on a piece of paper which we can give to the HIV infected people we will be visiting in the shelter homes next week. 

Thank you for listening! This was our presentation :-).

The thing that is a little bit difficult is that we can not talk about sex. We can only tell students about transmission through sexual fluids, but we can not tell how you get these sexual fluids inside of you (oral, anal, vaginal, penetrative). It is like a taboo to talk bout sex so that is really sad! 

Thursday 24 July

Give presentation at schools in Kuala Lumpur for 60 and 90 secondary schoolkids.
In the first school, the girls were braver than the boys but still everybody was very very very shy (so the sharing session was very difficult). In the second school we got a lot more input from the students and the presentation went really well and it was fun. The kids learned about HIV and had fun while learning. Goal achieved I guess :-). 

Friday 25 July
Semi free day! Meet the other 7 interns (from project MIRACLE). They are really nice and kind. We had lunch together (well sort of. 3 of them were fasting). Afterwards we had to go back to seremban. Had dinner with our buddies and relax in the evening. First night we all sleep together in one house! 

Saturday 26 July
Conduct workshop at Sint John's ambulance. Kids are very participative and think for themselves finally. (Culturally they don't think as individuals, they think as a 'we' and therefor are not able to shape an opinion of their own. They will always wait for someone else to be the first with something, they just follow).